Background
He was born Stanley Theodolph Marksman on the island of Saint Vincent to Sybil Providence and Stanley Marksman.
He was born Stanley Theodolph Marksman on the island of Saint Vincent to Sybil Providence and Stanley Marksman.
He adopted the name Samori Tarik Marksman at the time he became a citizen of Guinea in the 1970s, his work with the Guinean revolution earning him the Croix de Chivalry. During this period, Marksman taught at the University of Liberia and the College of West Africa while serving as director of the African division of the New York-based Pan African Skills Project, which recruited scientists and individuals with technical know-how to teach in Africa. On his return to the United States, Marksman founded and published the magazine Caribbean Perspective.
He was also a frequent contributor to Covert Action Quarterly and to the New York Amsterdam News.
From 1979 to 1983, Marksman was a publicist for the New Jewel Movement Marxist-Leninist People"s Revolutionary Government of Grenada, in which capacity he was a co-producer of the documentary film Grenada: The Future Coming Toward United States His service ended with the United States Invasion of Grenada.
Marksman taught journalism part-time at Long Island University. Marksman’s programs Behind the News and World View offered analyses of the news from a leftist perspective.
As program director of WBAI he presented such figures as Paul Robeson, John Henrik Clarke, Ivan van Sertima, Louis Clayton Jones, Walter Rodney, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah and Stokely Carmichael.
These organizations held community forums offering a platform to leaders of "liberation" struggles, the peace and environmental movements, and human rights activists.